RightScale is one example of a growing industry segment that seeks to disguise some of the complexity of maintaining (and, crucially, scaling) virtual server instances rented from Amazon, Rackspace [CloudAve coverage], GoGrid [CloudAve coverage], and equivalent providers of raw computing infrastructure. Competitors include UK-based ElasticHosts.

During our conversation Crandell talks about the importance of Cloud elasticity, and points to the role of companies such as his in masking some of the differences between Infrastructure providers by means of an intervening abstraction layer.

Is this one answer to the growing awareness that Cloud interoperability and portability is becoming of serious concern?